I'm bumping this comment up to "post" status. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it to the Anthony Williams event that I promoted yesterday because of a prior committment. Fortunately, one of our regular readers was able to make it and summarized it for us:
Here are the points I took away from Mayor Williams' talk last night:
1) The Mayor must be both a leader and a humble public servant. 30% of his time is spent leading, and 70% of his time is spent being the city's "butler." Successful mayors have the ability to be a strong leader, while also considering no task to be below his office.
2) Much of a mayor's success comes in the first few months. He must have an agenda ready to make small, but visible change from the start when he takes office.
3) Mayors in Democratic cities like Philadelphia and D.C. have time between the primary and general elections to prepare, but often make the mistake of focusing on policy rather than hiring the right people.
4) The mayor should come to office with three big agenda items, and must continue to push those items until they make their way into the public consciousness. For example, when nobody was focusing on the Anacostia River, Mayor Williams did. He talked about it nonstop, and now the City and development community are focusing on the Anacostia after many years of stagnation.
5) The mayor must improve the experience of working with the city. Be it in the form of the City's website, phone operators, lines at City Hall, it must all be efficient, streamlined, and connected.
6) Focus on investment value through infrastructure. Focus on street trees, clean and green programs, investing in public transit, facade programs and other types of improvements that together alter the physical environment, attract businesses, and drawing new investment.
7) It is important for a mayor to finance policies very conservatively. Overestimate costs and underestimate funding streams. Being a former municipal CFO, Mayor Williams understood the importance of the connection between policy and funding streams.
8) Tout your successes. Mayor Williams did a lot of traveling to other cities advertise the success of his programs, based on tangible data. This raised national awareness of the city's revitalization and served to further advance Washington's investment and tourism market.
9) People always expect more. Even when you exceed initial goals, legislators and the public always push the envelope.
10) Being a mayor is a great experience. But it's a real bummer being a former mayor.
Point number 3 seems especially relevant to our situation. Keeping in mind that we still have a general election in November, something totally unforeseen would probably have to happen for Nutter not to win the election. How much should we expect him to do in the ensuing months to prepare for when he takes office? Candidates often avoid the questions of personnel because they don't want to appear too presumptuous. But c'mon. We haven't had a situation like this since 1983 (even Rendell had to face Rizzo in 1991 until Mayor Frank past away in July of that year).
Would there be a strong negative reaction if Nutter begins to line up his senior people? Is that something that we should or would want to know more about?
Judging from today's news, it appears that he's already laying the foundation for the tone of his administration, including making nice with the current party power structure and improving relations between the city and the rest of the state.
How can Nutter avoid the trap that Mayor Williams talked about and focus just as much on hiring the right people as he does in crafting the policies that those people will help him carry out?
Comments (1)
I think that Nutter already knows a good deal of this advice. I think he needs to pick priority issues to talk about, and he needs to lead with a smaller, but very winnable issue, that he can fix early on, and then trumpet the success and build on it. It looks to me like "Bombing L&I" is that first issue. I would have picked something a little smaller, but Nutter has always been bolder than I am.
If he wins on the first issue, that will buy him time and political capital to face the next issues.
Issue number 2, I would predict, is the business privilege tax. He'll probably get a victory on that one, too, and claim any bump in number of businesses locating here or increased employment as a sign of that victory.
Issue number three will be the first really hard issue to work on. It has probably got to be the murder rate. He'll need a lot of political capital to get the Police Chief he needs, and to oversee an overhaul of police methods. He'll need to retrain the police and get them out of their ancient ways of thinking. They'll need to use data to police smart, and they've been resisting that for years.
Unfortunately, this three issue list leaves off education, and I don't think education can be left out of the Philadelphia equation. So I think he'll have to deal with four issues from the get-go, and trust he can win on issues 1 and 2 fast enough that he can tackle issues 3 and 4 with a strong hand. Personally, I think that education is a function of many other things, primarily jobs. With more employment, and more income for families, they'll have a cushion that will allow them to support their children's educational needs more, thus making the schools look better. I think there is not much the school system, itself can do without a strong partnership with parents. If you educate parents to do what they need to do, and make it possible for them to earn the resources they need to have the time they need to support their kids' education (i.e., have a comprehensive approach), you might make a difference. But I remain skeptical that the education system can lead the way. Find me a school with high-performing kids, and I'll show you a school where parents are highly involved in their children's education.
Finally, I think the major potential pitfall for Nutter is how he appears and how he talks. If he can communicate his ideas with an emotional strength, and avoid sounding too wonky, he'll do well. If he doesn't distill his ideas to the more important points, and pound that point across in an effective way, he'll fail.
Posted by Plokozhopsky | May 22, 2007 4:02 PM